1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns an abrasive body intended for surface processing, a support for the abrasive body and a machine comprising said abrasive body and support.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is well known that for many years past there have existed in the market numerous surface-processing devices that by means of the movement of some abrasive body are capable of finishing the surfaces of a wide range of objects, including furniture, wooden articles or rubber, plastic or metal parts of, for example, automobiles or other articles.
In particular, the processing that these devices are intended to carry out are substantially surface-finishing operations (grinding adjustments, smoothing, polishing, removal of working residues, etc.) and operations to prepare the surfaces for such further processing as painting, gluing and the like.
In particular, the machines known today essentially consist of a frame to which the user can attach a supporting element intended to receive the abrasive body and to be set in rapid motion to enable it to carry out the processing operation.
In other words, such surface processing machines will be equipped with a means for producing movement, typically an electric or pneumatic motor, that will apply the motion it generates to the support and therefore also to the abrasive body via an appropriate transmission shaft.
The device may also be provided with appropriate gripping elements by means of which the user may hold and guide it while carrying out the processing operations on the object to be processed.
When the machine is switched on, the support and the abrasive body are set in motion and the operator can carry out the necessary operations by bringing the abrasive body into contact with the surface to be finished.
A first problem associated with the machines briefly described above is bound up with the fact thatxe2x80x94by their very naturexe2x80x94operations of processing surfaces by means of abrasion inevitably imply the creation of dust particles as a result of the material that is removed during the operation.
With a view to obviating this difficulty, the machines of this type produced and marketed in the more recent past have often been provided with appropriate suction systems that generate a depression in the area of the support and the abrasive body, so that the abraded particles can be sucked up from the working zone and led away via appropriate channels or ducts in the support.
In particular, the said suction is generally made possible because both the support associated with the machine frame and the abrasive body are provided with appropriate suction holes.
According to the type of material that is to be processed, as also the suction force and the type of machine involved, the number and the layout of these holes can vary very considerably.
It should however be noted that these devices (i.e. machine-support-abrasive body systems), even though they are widely available in the market, are associated with a number of drawbacks and/or operating limitations.
First of all, it should be noted that the typical surface that has to be processed will not be perfectly flat and/or that the processing may have to be carried out at the edges or corners of the surface or on surfaces on which it is not possible to rest the whole of the abrasive body.
In such situations it is readily obvious that only some of the holes in the abrasive body will effectively come to be placed in the processing zone; the remaining suction holes, on the other hand, will be situated away from the processing surface and also from the dust generated by the processing. Consequently, the suction force will inevitably and disadvantageously be greater where there is no resistance to the passage of the air, that is to say, at the holes situated away from the processing zone.
Fundamentally this implies that the suction of the material will occur at the holes situated away from the processing surface and therefore also away from the zones where the abraded dust particles are to be found.
The limit just explained can obviously prove harmful to the health of the operator, since he will be working in an environment that has not been cleansed of the dust material generated during the processing; it can lead to cleaning problems in the work area and may also imply problems bound up with the fact that the abraded particles will remain on the surface that has to be processed, where they will cause obstruction and thus reduce the efficiency of the processing.
Furthermore, the very presence of these suction holes appreciably diminishes the active surface of the abrasive body available for removing material from the surface, thus inevitably reducing the work output that can be obtained from it as compared with a similar body devoid of such holes.
Lastly, the presence of holes only in some parts of the abrasive body may imply that some of the abraded particles are not sucked away and will therefore remain between the abrasive body and the surface to be processed, creating a layer of abraded material in the truest sense of the term and therefore an obstruction for the abrasive body that will reduce the latter""s efficiency.
Lastly again, the holes in the abrasive body and in the support require to be exactly superimposed in order to cause complete dust suction and avoid abrasive body gumming.
In such situations it is the principal scope of the present invention to substantially obviate the drawbacks that have just been described.
The scope of the present invention is therefore to make available an abrasive body, together with a support that utilizes the said abrasive body and/or to which the said abrasive body can be applied, capable of providing a targeted suction and therefore assuring a very substantial increase of the efficiency of the abrasive body and/or the abrasive body-support combination and/or the machine-abrasive body-support combination. A further scope of the invention is to attain the aforementioned objectives without complicating the structure of the machine-support combination and without necessarily having to increase the suction power and therefore also the energy consumption and the costs associated therewith.
Another scope of the invention is that of making available an abrasive body that is simple to produce, implies substantially limited costs and, while yet improving the efficiency, does not have any of the operating drawbacks associated with the abrasive bodies marketed today.
These scopes, as well as others that will become more apparent in the course of the present description, are substantially attained by an abrasive body capable of being associated with surface processing machines and with the support for the abrasive body with which such machines are provided, all as described in the claims that follow the present description.
Further characteristics and advantages of the invention will become more readily apparent from the detailed description of a preferred but not exclusive form of an abrasive body in accordance with the present invention.